[SydPhil] Event Announcement: Plato: Ancient and Modern

Tue Nov 5 17:38:42 AEDT 2024

Plato: Ancient and Modern

The University of Notre Dame Australia’s Centre for the History of Philosophy and School of Philosophy and Theology warmly invite you to Plato: Ancient and Modern, to be held on 18-19 November 2024 at our Sydney (Broadway) campus.

Monday 18 November

Session 1 - Plato for the 21st Century - a seminar with Gerd van Riel (Leuven)
2:30pm-4:00pm (AEDT)

Session 2 - Book launch for Samuel Kaldas (UNDA), The Cambridge Platonists and Early Modern Philosophy
5:00pm-7:00pm (AEDT)

Tuesday 19 November

Session 3 - The Basic Principles of Neoplatonism - a Masterclass with Gerd van Riel (Leuven)
10:00am-12:00pm (AEDT)

Online participation via Zoom is possible – register to receive Zoom links.
Attendance is free. Registration is essential.
Register here: https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/qeZUCZY1NqioQG7AQczfyHBNI6V?domain=forms.office.com
For inquiries: nathan.lyons at nd.edu.au<mailto:nathan.lyons at nd.edu.au>
Find out more about the Notre Dame Centre for the History of Philosophy: https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/dqOHC1WLPxcEqR6xqcGhEHVzRF4?domain=notredame.edu.au<applewebdata://6C2D1793-47CE-49EB-AD9D-F9FD1DDE45FE/notredame.edu.au/chop>

Session 1
Plato for the 21st Century
A seminar with Gerd van Riel

2:30pm-4:00pm (AEDT), Mon 18 Nov
Moorgate Boardroom, UNDA, 10 Grafton St, Chippendale, NSW
Speakers: Gerd van Riel (Leuven) with response by Emily Hulme (Sydney)

Abstract: Plato came under fire during the 20th century: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Popper, and many others accused Plato of having led Western rationality astray by introducing an eternally unchanging ideal reality. Along the same lines, Plato’s allegedly final insight into the nature of goodness and justice brought 20th century philosophers to discredit his design of an ideal state as a collectivist project of a closed society, and as a justification of totalitarianism. We want to see whether this criticism is justified, and whether it was not motivated by certain (mainly Aristotelian) interpretive presuppositions among twentieth-century readers of Plato. Perhaps a new reading of Plato will provide new insights that re-value Plato’s possible contribution to addressing contemporary political and societal challenges.

Gerd Van Riel is Dean of the Institute of Philosophy at KU Leuven, and studied Classics and Philosophy (PhD Leuven, 1997). His research focuses on Plato and the Platonic tradition, with monographs on Plato’s Gods (Ashgate, 2013), Pleasure and the Good Life (Brill, 2000), and critical text editions of Damascius’ In Philebum (Les Belles Lettres, 2008) and Proclus’ In Timaeum (Oxford, 2022). He was the 2017 Thomas F. Martin Saint Augustine Fellow at Villanova University. He held a Francqui research professorship from 2015 until 2018. He is a member of the Royal Belgian Academy for Sciences and the Arts.

Emily Hulme is a Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, specializing in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy. She received her PhD from Princeton University in 2019 and has published research on a range of topics including Plato, techne, and the oracular tablets from Dodona in academic journals such as Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Apeiron, and Greece & Rome. Her research interests include Plato’s epistemology and ethics, philosophy of language from Parmenides to the Stoics, and arguments concerning the status of women in the ancient world.

Session 2
Book launch
Samuel Kaldas, The Cambridge Platonists and Early Modern Philosophy

5:00pm-7:00pm (AEDT), Mon 18 Nov (refreshments from 5:00; proceedings from 5:30pm)
Moorgate Room, UNDA, 10 Grafton St, Chippendale, NSW
Speakers: Peter Anstey (Sydney) & Samuel Kaldas (UNDA)

Samuel Kaldas, The Cambridge Platonists and Early Modern Philosophy: Inventing the Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge University Press, 2024).
Abstract: Often neglected by historians today, the 17th century philosophers known as the Cambridge Platonists were recognised in their time as some of the most influential and controversial philosophers in England. Whereas most studies of the Cambridge Platonists have discussed their later careers, this book focuses on their early, formative years at Cambridge during the English Civil Wars. Samuel Kaldas explores how the Cambridge Platonists addressed issues central to philosophy of religion as we know it today through their engagement with early seventeenth-century religious controversies about predestination, the character and nature of God, and the role of reason in religion. His study serves as an accessible introduction to both the Cambridge Platonists, and to English religious controversies that contributed to the birth of the modern philosophy of religion. Kaldas provides context for and fresh insights into the Cambridge Platonists' intellectual development and the coherence of their thought.

Samuel Kaldas is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame Australia. He is a historian of philosophy and philosopher of religion. He has held research fellowships at the University of Sydney and Fordham University's Orthodox Christian Studies Centre, and teaches widely on philosophy, theology and patristics.

Peter Anstey is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. He specialises in early modern philosophy and is the author and editor of numerous books, including John Locke and Natural Philosophy (Oxford, 2011) and Experimental Philosophy and the Origins of Empiricism (Cambridge, 2023, with Alberto Vanzo).

Session 3
The Basic Principles of Neoplatonism
A masterclass with Gerd van Riel

10:00am-12:00pm (AEDT), Tues 19 Nov
Moorgate Boardroom, UNDA, 10 Grafton St, Chippendale, NSW
Teacher: Gerd van Riel (Leuven)

Gerd Van Riel is Dean of the Institute of Philosophy at KU Leuven, and studied Classics and Philosophy (PhD Leuven, 1997). His research focuses on Plato and the Platonic tradition, with monographs on Plato’s Gods (Ashgate, 2013), Pleasure and the Good Life (Brill, 2000), and critical text editions of Damascius’ In Philebum (Les Belles Lettres, 2008) and Proclus’ In Timaeum (Oxford, 2022). He was the 2017 Thomas F. Martin Saint Augustine Fellow at Villanova University. He held a Francqui research professorship from 2015 until 2018. He is a member of the Royal Belgian Academy for Sciences and the Arts.

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David Bronstein, PhD
Co-Director, Notre Dame Centre for the History of Philosophy<https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/G4t1C2xMQziE8jVW8cBiAH5gfJL?domain=notredame.edu.au>
Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Ethics and Society
University of Notre Dame Australia (Sydney)
Australian Research Council Future Fellow, 2023-26
Associate Editor, Australasian Journal of Philosophy
Recently published: Aristotelian Metaphysics: Essays in Honour of David Charles (OUP)<https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/ldJ-C3QNPBiR2BXo2TDsrHQn8EM?domain=global.oup.com>

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